Last week, Tram Anh Nguyen, Co-Founder of CFTE and Founder of Global Women in AI, joined an important conversation hosted by 100 Women in Finance and the Barclays Innovation Hub powered by Eagle Labs in London.
The event, “Practical AI Adoption for Female Founders in FinTech,” brought together founders, industry leaders and ecosystem builders to explore what practical AI adoption means for financial services and fintech today. The discussion, alongside Rachel Tshondo, Emanuela Vartolomei and Ally Clegg, highlighted a key shift now taking place across the industry.
AI is no longer just a technology conversation. It is becoming an operating model conversation.
For organisations and founders, AI-readiness cannot be reduced to sending one person to an AI training programme and expecting them to return with a few useful tools. Nor is it simply about deploying more agents, automating individual tasks or experimenting with isolated use cases.
AI adoption requires a deeper organisational capability. It has to shape how decisions are made, how risks are governed, how products are built, how customers are served, how teams scale and how trust is created.
This means moving from AI awareness to AI capability.
For AI to be adopted responsibly and effectively, organisations need to build the foundations that allow it to scale. These include:
- AI-readiness assessments across the organisation
- AI literacy at scale
- Systems thinking skills
- Strong AI governance
- Transparency and accountability
- Trusted ecosystems
- Access to networks, markets and capital
For female founders in fintech and AI, this conversation is particularly important.
The barriers to building are falling. Domain experts can now prototype, automate, analyse, test and reach customers faster than ever before. AI is creating new opportunities for entrepreneurs to move from idea to execution with unprecedented speed.
However, access remains critical.
If access to capital, data, platforms and networks remains concentrated in the hands of a few, AI will not democratise opportunity. Instead, it risks accelerating existing gaps.
This is why practical AI adoption must also be connected to inclusion. The future of AI will be shaped not only by technology, but by who has the opportunity, skills, confidence and support to build with it.
Through Global Women in AI, Tram Anh and the wider community are working to help close this gap and support the next generation of women leaders in AI, including through the Supercharging 10,000 Women to Lead in AI programme.
Through CFTE, we continue to build the capability infrastructure that enables professionals, founders and institutions to move from AI awareness to AI leadership.
The future of AI should not be shaped by a narrow group of people. It must be shaped by a diversity of talent, experience and perspectives that reflect the world AI is meant to serve.
Thank you to 100 Women in Finance and the Barclays Innovation Hub powered by Eagle Labs teams for convening such an important and timely discussion.
